P572 

. Kit Vr 



^^ 



Compliments of 
MICHIGAN CENTRAL R. R. 

pAaSENGEK IJtf AUTMEN T. 



^^CKINAC Isi.^^, 



^ 



THE WAVE-WASHED TOURISTS' PARADISE 



-3^ 



THE UNSALTED SEAS. 



"By P. DONAK. 







V/N^fV^ 



ic / ^yo'? 



^\. >^«;i ■■ 








Entered, according to Act of" Congress, in the year 1882, by 

THE MICHIGAN CENTRAL R. R. CO., 
in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



1882: 

Times Printing House, 

st. louis, mo. 




1. 
INTRODUCTORY. 

AMERICA AND HER NATURAL ADVANTAGES AND ATTRACTIONS— FOLLY OF THE AVERAGE 

AMERICAN TOURIST. 



MONG all the lands and nationalities of earth, America stands, in many respects, peerless, 
unrivaled and unrivalable. Beside her vast dimensions, the grandest empires of the old world, 
of ancient and of modern times, sink to petty provinces. The whole possessions of Rome, when 
her golden eagles spread their wings victorious over half the globe, as it then was known, fell short of 
the immensity of our new world domain. Russia, vastest of modern sovereignties, could be lost in our 
half-hemisphere. France, land of Napoleon, at the tread of whose legions but little more than half a 
century ago all Europe trembled, would scarcely overlap the single territory of Dakota; while Great 
Britain, proud mistress of the seas, whose morning drum-beat sounds around the globe, would hardly 
make a freckle on the face of Texas or California. 



MACKINAC ISLAND. 



Do other lands boast of their great rivers? We could take up all their Niles and Thameses, their 
yellow Tibers, castled Rhines, and beautiful blue Danubes, by their little ends, and empty them into our 
majestic Mississippis and Missouris, Amazons and De la Platas, without making rise enough to lift an 
Indiana flat-boat off a sand-bar. Do they brag of their seas and lakes? We could spill all their 
puny Caspians and Azovs, their Dead Seas, Nyanzas and Maggiores, into our mighty Superiors, Michi- 
gans, Hurons, Eries and Ontarios, and scarce produce a ripple on their pebbly brims. Do they prate of 
their romantic scenery? We have a thousand jewel-like lakes that would make all their vaunted Comos, 
Genevas and Killarneys hide their faces in a veil of friendly fog; the thunder of our Niagara 
drowns out the feeble murmur of all their cataracts ; while the awful crags and canyons of our Yosemite 
and Yellowstone, the prismatic glitter and dash of our St. Anthonys, Tahquamenons and Minnehahas, 
and the lonely grandeur of our boundless prairie oceans of billowy verdure, dwarf to insipidity the most 
famous scenes of Switzerland and Italy, eclipse the wonders and glories of oriental fable, and defy all 
the skill of poet's pen and artist's pencil to depict the veriest atom of their sublimity and their loveli- 
ness. Do they prattle about their ^tnas and Vesuviuses? We thunder forth our American Cotopaxis, 
Popocatapetls, Chimborazos, and a score of other lava-belching giants whose very names alone are too 
huge for common tongues. Do other lands and nations talk of their mines of jewels and gold? We answer 
with the exhaustless bonanzas of California, Colorado, Arizona and Dakota, where mountains of gold 
and silver ore, veritable treasure-houses of the gods, rear their proud heads to heaven, and where the 
ceaseless thunder of the world's greatest gold and silver mills resounds in the yet warm lair of the Rocky 
Mountain grizzly bear. Do they rave of tne harvest-fields of Germany and Britain, and the vine-clad 
hills of France? We show them a new, fresh continent, with soils and climates as varied as the tastes 



MACKINAC ISLAND. 



of men, and with capacities of production as boundless as the needs of men. Every other habitable 
land was discovered and worn out centuries on centuries ago. For us and our habitation the Fates 

reserved a fresh and glorious half-world, a 




hemisphere, grand in all its proportions 
and endlessly varied, rich and gorgeous in 
all its adornments, resting like a vast emer- 
ald breastpin upon the bosom of four great 
oceans, and hidden by three thousand 
miles of trackless and tempestuous billows 
from the prying eyes of the ancient adven- 
turers whose egg-shell barks had plowed 
their way to every other region where 
human foot could find a resting-place and 
human greed a grasping-place. It is the 
broadest land ever given to any people, 
the grandest and most beautiful, the most 
varied in its attractions and its products, 
and the most unlimited in its capabilities 
and its future. 

The more one rambles over this magnif- 
icent continent, our own half world, and 



MACKINAC ISLAND. 



the more he sees of its never-ending, ever-changing glories, sublimities and beauties, the greater must be 
his contempt for the average American tourist, who turns his back on scenes as transcendently grand, 
varied and enchanting as ever the sun, in all his wide celestial rounds, looked down upon ; and rushes off 
to Europe, to loaf around fashionable hotels, wine-shops and haberdashers' stores, all infinitely inferior to 
our own, and then come back and prate, in mock-turtle French, of " la belle Paree," queenly " Madreed," 
the Lake of Como, Mont Blanc, Rome, Venice, Vesuvius and the Alps, and a hundred other places he 
never saw and things he knows nothing about. He goes an ignoramus, and he comes back an ass — a 
traveled ass, ever ready to bray stale guide-book quotations in regard to historic spots and famous scenes 
that he has never seen, and could not have appreciated if he had. If he chances to meet an intelligent 
European in his travels, the first question asked him exposes his stupidity and his folly, for it is a question 
about some one of the innumerable, sublime and wondrous objects in his own country that he has never 
deemed worth a visit. In view of the hegira that, each spring and summer, jams every out-bound 
steamer, there is urgent need of a constitutional amendment prohibiting any untutored American from 
going abroad until he has seen his own supremely lovely land. It should require, as a prerequisite for 
permission to visit London fogs and chop-houses, Parisian milliners' and tailors' shops, and Italian skies, 
maccaroni kettles and hand-organ-and-monkey factories, a certificate from the president or general pas- 
senger agent of at least one of our great transcontinental railways, that the would-be foreign voyager 
has visited all the glorious and beautiful scenes along his line. This would be a grand educational 
measure. It would give thousands of sham Americans, native-born aliens and brevet foreigners, some 
idea of the grandeur of their own land, and prevent them from showing themselves the benighted 
ignoramuses they now appear to every decent man or woman they meet after setting foot on European soil. 



MACKINAC ISLAND. 



Itw 

Niagara 



as Byron who, when an American was introduced to him, began eagerly to question him about 
Falls, and on being told that he had never seen them, turned on his heel with an oath of 
unutterable disgust at the idea of a man's coming from America to Europe 
without having seen that wonder of the world in his own country. 

Nature never constructed a bigger combined idiot and cheap humbug 
thm the American who goes into bogus raptures over the lakes and crags of 
itzerland or Italy, while he has never seen or cared to see Niagara, 
; wild Yosemite realm, the Yellowstone Park or the canyons of the 
ilorado. And these marvelous displays of omnipotent genius, taste 
and skill are scarcely more worthy of note than 
countless others that are strewn all over our western 
world. The White Mountains, the Catskills, the 
Thousand Islands of the St. Lawrence, the cloud- 
wrapped heights of Lookout Mountain, and the 
Alpine peaks and valleys of Dakota, Montana and 
Idaho, all invite the cultivated tourist to a wide- 
spread banquet of perpetual enchantment. But none 
of these famous regions of resort surpass, if any of 
them even rival, in attractions the long-known and 
yet comparatively unknown Mackinac Island. 
Reader, do you confess that you do not know where 




MACKINAC ISLAND. 



it is, and that, except in connection with " Mackinaw blankets," you never heard of it? You need 
hardly be ashamed of your ignorance when you have so much company in it. Not one in a hundred, 
even of the most intelligent people in America, can tell where it is without referring to a map. You are 
only one of the ninety and nine. You belong to the great majority. 

Once for all, then, let it be understood that Mackinac Island is a part of the State of Michigan. 
Do you say you know nothing of Michigan? Then it is high time you were learning. With all our 
boasting of our free schools and universal education, about three questions in the primary geography of 
his country generally suffices to seat the average American citizen on a self-erected dunce-block with 
emphasis enough to make his teeth rattle. Get out your atlas and begin. 



II. 
MICHIGAN 



A FEW FACTS ABOUT THE GREAT STATE TO WHICH MACKINAC ISLAND BELONGS- 

A LAND OF FORESTS AND LAKES, OF CATARACTS, ISLANDS 

AND W^ONDERFUL RICHES. 



/ I \URN to the map of the great lake States. There, stretching from 41^ 50' to 48^ of north latitude, 
I are two vast peninsulas, separated by the Straits of Mackinac. One of these peninsulas, resting 

on Ohio and Indiana as a base, measures two hundred and seventy-five miles from north to 
south, and is a hundred and seventy-five miles wide from east to west at its southern boundary line ; it 
is washed on the west by Lake Michigan, and on the east by Lake Huron, the St. Clair River, Lake St. 
Clair, Detroit River, and Lake Erie. The other peninsula, resting at its western end upon Wisconsin, 
runs east and west three hundred and sixteen miles, and is from thirty to a hundred and twenty miles 
wide from north to south ; it is washed throughout its entire length on the north by Lake Superior, and 
on the south by Lake Michigan, while its western point projects into Lake Huron. These two peninsulas 
form the State of Michigan, no part of which is as far north as Paris, France. 




STATE HOUSE, MICHIGAN — THE NEW AND THE OLD. 



MACKINAC ISLAND. 



This great peninsular State is 9,000 square miles larger than New York, 10,000 larger than Pennsyl- 
vania, 16,000 larger than Ohio, and 23,000 larger than Indiana; and only lacks about 12,000 square 
miles of being as large as all the New England States put together. It has a coast-line of 1,600 miles — 
long enough to reach more than half the distance from New York to Liverpool, and nearly as much as 
all the Atlantic States combined, excepting Florida alone. It is surrounded by the four largest bodies 
of fresh water upon the globe, and as the water of these mighty inland oceans seldom falls below thirty- 
five degrees of temperature, and rarely rises above forty-four, the climate is more equable than in any 
other portion of the Union in the same latitude. A large part of the famous "California fruit" of the 
markets is raised in this State. Its orchards of apples, pears, peaches, plums, quinces and all the varieties 
of small fruits, and its vineyards of white and purple grapes, are unsurpassed anywhere, while figs and 
nectarines have been grown in the open air. 

The native flora of Michigan comprises 1,634 varieties of trees, shrubs, grasses and flowers. Its 
forests are the grandest in the world. According to the official report of the State Commissioner of 
Immigration, Hon. Frederick Morley, the white ash attains a circumference of sixteen feet, the birch of 
ten and a half feet, the buttonwood of from twenty-six to thirty-three feet, the black walnut of thirty-three 
feet, the cottonwood of from eighteen to thirty feet, the white oak of from twenty to twenty-five feet, the 
white pine of nineteen and a half feet, the cedar of fifteen feet; and the wild grapevine is found thirty 
inches around the girth. A single tulip tree in Oakland County furnished 5,060 feet of lumber, and on 
the Muskegon River a white pine scaled nearly 9,000 feet. 

Michigan produces nearly half of all the salt produced in the United States, and more lumber and 
fresh-water fish than any other one State, while as a wheat-producer it stands fourth, being outranked 



"V& 



only by Illinois, Indiana and Ohio. It has, in the "Calumet-and-Hecla," 

the grandest copper mine the world has ever seen, paying more dividends 

thin any gold or silver mine in America; it contains, in the "Jackson" and 

^ the "Republic," the greatest iron mines upon the globe; and its 

""'^^ \ copper and iron mines yielded, last year, vaster profits than all 

'^ * the gold and silver mines of California and Colorado combined. 

""- Michigan contains over 5,000 exquisite, gem-like lakes — more 

^ >^ than all Wisconsin, -. _--;^i^s^ ^^.3- 



-^Jf^/l^- 



Minnesota and Dakota 
combined. Many of 
these liquid breast-pins 
of the landscape are sur- 
rounded by glorious, al- 
most mountainous scen- 
ery, which is the one great lacking in the Oconomowoc and 
Minnetonka region, and are as picturesque and beautiful as 
any that ever laughed back to the stars in heaven their own 
radiant reflections, dimpling and sparkling amid the lace-like 
crests of every tiny wavelet. The forests everywhere in the 
northern part of the State abound with game — deer, black bear, 
wild turkeys, pheasants or ruffed grouse, quails and all the 




infinite varieties of water-fowl, while occasionally in the deep glades the giant antlers of an elk are seen. 
Every lake and stream swarms with pickerel, pike, whitefish, muskalonge, the epicurean brook trout, and, 
chiefest of all, the gamy, delicious grayling, which was until recently supposed to be wholly a European 
fish. It is found in America only in the waters of Michigan, and is as far superior in every respect to 
the brook trout, as that aquatic celebrity and piscatorial aristocrat is to the Missouri mud-cat. The balmy 
air of the grand pine forests, and the climate perpetually moderated by the vast bodies of pure water that 
almost wholly surround the State, afford sure and speedy relief, if not a permanent cure, for hay-fever 
and catarrh. Malarious diseases are almost unknown, and all ailments of throat and lungs are benefited 
by the bracing atmosphere. Many instances might be cited of perfect cures of catarrhal and bronchial 
affections by the remedial effects of the air and climate in the regions about Mackinac and Marquette. 
With all these advantages, there are at least a thousand places along the shores of both peninsulas, that 
can be made as charming summer resorts as ever health or rest or pleasure seeker could ask or wish 
to find. 




THE GRAYLING. 



III. 
MACKINAC ISLAND 



A WAVE-WASHED TOURISTS' PARADISE— SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL SCENERY— HISTORIC, 

LEGENDARY AND POETIC ASSOCIATIONS— A BEW^ILDERING 

MAZE OF ATTRACTIONS. 



QRANDEST and loveliest of all these Michigan sauntering-spots, unrivaled queen of all these 
snatches of enchanted summer land, is Mackinac Island, in the Straits of Mackinac, whose 
blue-green waves divide the two peninsulas that compose the State. It lies in latitude 45° 51' 
north, and longitude 84'^ 41' 22" west, and is three hundred and forty-six miles north of Chicago, and 
three hundred and one miles northwest of Detroit. Authorities differ as to the origin and meaning of its 
full name, Michillimackinac. Many writers derive it from the Indian word, " Me-che-me-kin-oc-e-nung- 
gonge," signifying "Great Turtle," from its peculiar shape. William M. Johnston, who wrote an 
elaborate series of articles upon the Island and the region, nearly a quarter of a century ago, claims, 
and doubtless correctly, that the name was "Me-she-ne-mock-e-nung-gonge," meaning "The Island of 
Giant Fairies." The Indian tradition about it is that Michapous, the chief of spirits, dwelt here a long 




LEANING ROCK, MACKINAC ISLAND. 



MACKINAC ISLAND. 19 



time, and his home was in a mountain on the border of the lake. It was here, they say, he first taught 
men to make nets for fishing, and here he collected the greatest supplies of fish. On the Island he left 
spirits named Imakinakos, from which its name may be derived. It has in all ages been hallowed 
ground to the simple red men, whose gods and genii dwelt amid its solemn shades. 

Excepting the inaccessible Yellowstone Park alone, there is no spot in all the new world that more 
nearly unites in itself all the glories and beauties and advantages that constitute a perfect tourists' 
paradise. Rising grandly from the mighty channel, in which the waters of earth's three greatest unsalted 
oceans, Superior, Huron and Michigan, meet and blend in eternal billowy harmony, Mackinac Island 
is nearly nine miles in circumference, and towers at its highest point over three hundred feet above the 
waves that lave its snowy feet. The United States government has, with a just appreciation of its 
wonderful attractions, reserved the entire Island, with the exception of three small farms whose title is 
guaranteed by treaty, for a National Park, as it has the famous geyser garden in the Yellowstone region. 

This Island has filled an important place in the history of all exploration since the pale-face first set 
foot upon the new world. Here was a rendezvous of the daring French voyagers and adventurers before 
the Pilgrims landed, with their psalm-books and baked beans, on Plymouth Rock. Here occurred many 
wild and thrilling incidents in the lives of Marquette, Hennepin, Nicollet and La Salle. On these 
beautiful shores they mustered their heroic bands for the discovery of the Mississippi ; and over at Point 
St. Ignatius, now irreverently corrupted into St. Ignace, in plain view five miles across one channel of 
the lake, Marquette was escorted to his burial-place by a hundred canoes of plumed and painted Ottawa, 
Huron and Ojibway warriors in 1677. Just across, on the most northern point of the lower peninsula, 
six miles away over an arm of the Straits, stood old Fort Michillimackinac, the scene of the terrible 



MACKINAC ISLAND. 



massacre of tlie whites by the Indians imtler the famous chief 
Pontiac, in 1763. On this Island were fought two battles of the 
war of 1812; and here, for forty years, were the headquarters 
of the American Fur Company, of which John Jacob Astor was 
president. Here, by trading in hides, skins, pelts and whisky, 
he made the money, on which the present Astor family, of New 
York, bases its aristocratic pretensions. Here Schoolcraft, 
who was Indian agent on the Island, wrote his celebrated 
-^--^ _ "Historyof the North 





American Indians," 
and " The Legend of 
Hiawatha," which America's lamented poet-laureate, Long- 
fellow, who visited Schoolcraft here, afterward expanded into a 
most nonsensical alleged poem, that is always suggestive of a 
two-tailed dog with an empty oyster-can to each. Three flags 
have waved over this Island domain. France virtually held it, 
in conjunction part of the time with her Huron allies, from 1 610 
to 1 761, when it was surrendered to Great Britain. It was 
yielded to the United States in 1796; retaken by the British in 
1812; and again relinquished to the government of Yankee 
Doodle, under the treaty of Ghent, which was signed in Novem- 



MACKINAC ISLAND. 



ber, 1814, though possession was not given until the spring of 1815. The whole region abounds in 
historic, legendary and poetic memories and associations, an elaborate compilation of which has recently 
been made by Lieutenant D. H. Kelton, of the United States Army, in a charming little volume entitled 
"Annals of Fort Mackinac"; an invaluable book of reference for tourists, with all the fascination of a 
novel, for it gives facts that are stranger than fiction, and treats of a spot whose history has been wilder 
than romance. 

The whole Island is a vast labyrinthine tangle of miniature mountains, wild precipices, overhanging 
cliffs and crags, yawning caverns; strange rocky formations like the weird spires of the Yosemite and 
the Yellowstone, tall, fingerlike pillars of stone, hundreds of feet high, straight and slender as Cleopatra's 
Needle; cataracts of dizzy height, leaping from perpendicular walls of gray and moss-grown rock far out 
into the lake below ; glorious shelving beaches of snow-white sand and gravel, hard and smooth as a 
ball-room floor, on which one can ride or drive or stroll for miles at a stretch, with the never-ceasing 
melody of plashing waters lulling every sense but that of tender bliss; occasional views of storm-lashed 
billows, rivaling in the grandeur of their savagery the ocean at its maddest; a fort, dating back through 
more than a century of war and romance, cannon looking out through high embrasures over the liquid 
highway they are to guard, grass-bordered parade-grounds, troops of gilt-tinseled young officers who 
have just learned the last waltz or galop step on the Hudson, a splendid military band, two battle-fields 
of the war of 1812; a burial-ground, where the heroic dead in blue coats and red coats, in wampum and 
paint and eagles' feathers, were laid away to await the last great ret'cillc to be sounded by an arch- 
angelic bugle from the battlements above; old Jesuit churches and mission-houses, ancient ruins, history, 
poetry, legend, glorious boating and bathing, six-pound brook trout, Indian villages and birch-bark 



MACKINAC ISLAND. 



canoes, bass, pickerel, muskalonge, hoary survivors of the death- 
grapples with the British and Indians threescore years and ten ago, 
forty-pound whitefish, silver moonlight glinting on silver floods; 
mighty steamships with their trails of smoke, moving like stately mon- 
archs of the waves, and fleets of tmy white-siiled jachtb and pleasure- 
boats darting hither and 
thither like happy swallows 
on the wing; and, around 
and over all, like an upper 
and a lower canopy, the 
boundless drapery of blue 
water and blue sky melting 

mto one along the fai-off hoiizon line where heaven and earth 

seem to meet and kiss each other. Only to have beheld all 

these sublime scenes, to have feasted with appreciative soul on 

all these splendors of sight and sound and memorable event, is 

itself almost an education. Every spot upon the Island pos- 
sesses some peculiar interest, and every turn reveals some 

glorious panoramic view. A few of the most notable points 

are catalogued in the next chapter. 





IV. 



POINTS OF SPECIAL INTEREST. 



A FEW OUT OF MANY — THE TOWN, THE FORT, THE MISSION-HOUSE, ROBERTSON'S FOLLY, 

GIANT'S CAUSEWAY, FAIRY ARCH, ARCH ROCK, TODD'S OBELISK, SCOTT'S CAVE, 

BRITISH LANDING, SUGAR LOAF ROCK, LOVER'S LEAP, INDIAN 

LOOKOUT AND OLD FORT HOLMES. 



THE TOWN OF MACKINAC. 



SAIL around the island in any of the little steamers or yachts that are always at command 
presents a continuous succession of charming views, but none is more striking than that on 
entering the harbor at its southern end. The beautiful bay is crescent-shaped, and its waters 
are so clear that a white marble or a silver quarter can be distinctly seen at a depth of from twenty to 
fifty feet. Myriads of fish are plainly visible as they cleave their way through the liquid crystal. 



MACKINAC ISLAND. 



A lady writei- prettily says : 

Sometimes 'tis a shield of silver, 
Bright in the sunshine's glow. 

Reflecting the white sailed vessels. 
Like a mirror fair below. 

And sometimes the lightest ripple 
Dimples its waters blue, 

And rocks like an infant's cradle 
The skiff and the light canoe. 

And we watch the gorgeous sunsets 
Of rosy and golden dyes, 



Till it seems that over its waters^ 
The path of glory lies. 

When its sea-green waves are tossing, 
How freshly the breezes blow ; 

Like the breath of life to the fainting 
In the simoom's fervid glow. 

But the wild winds wake its billows. 
Sweeping with sullen roar, 

Till they dash in misty fragments 
Far on the sandy shore. 



Overlooking the bay, the tall white cliffs with their back-ground of waving forest; the fort, with its 
massive walls of white-washed stone, clinging picturesquely to the brow of the precipice ; the straggling 
little town at its feet, strongly recalling visions of Italian fishing villages ; the long rambling hotels, with 
their full length verandas above and below; the neat modern residences, with their grass-plots and 
shrubbery, fountains and flowers, mingling among buildings that have been historic for three generations ; 
and, as a frontispiece to it all, the wide, smooth, gently sloping beach of snowy sand on which the sunlit 
waters ever play, all combine to form a picture that, once seen, like Naples or Gibraltar, is never forgotten. 

The town of Mackinac contains two churches, a school-house, court-house, six hotels, a number of 
summer boarding-houses, stores and shops of all kinds, and quite a sprinkling of handsome dwellings, 



26 MACKINAC ISLAND. 



books and records of the Company from 1815 to 1836, including a correspondence with Gen. Winfield 
Scott soon after the battle of Lundy's Lane. The bar and billiard room is an immense hall with low 
ceiling and huge pine cross-beams, on one of which is chiseled in rude, sprawling characters: "417 
pines used in this frame." The hand that cut the inscription has long been dust. The other hotels are 
the Mackinac House, Island House, St. Cloud, Palmer and Lake View. Excellent boarding-houses are 
kept by Mrs. Bennett, Mrs. Davis, Mrs. Franks in the old Mission-house, and Mrs. Todd, mother of 
H. A. N. Todd, the first native-born "President of the Island," which position he is now filling. The 
Todd house was built in 181 8 by Captain Pierce, a brother of President Frank Pierce, and a brother-in- 
law of Gen. John McNeil, the rival of Winfield Scott for the heroship of Lundy's Lane. The present 
mission-house was built by the Presbyterians in 1824, Rev. W. H. Ferry, the father of Senator T. W. 
Ferry, of Michigan, being in charge. The Senator was born in this house. The old Indian Dormitory, 
now used as a school-house, was erected in 1838, as a lodging-place for the Indian chiefs and the more 
prominent members of their tribes, who constantly visited the place on business connected with their 
treaties, annuities and reservations. Among the elegant residences are those of C. B. Fenton, and 
Hon. A. Sheley of Detroit. 

FORT MACKINAC. 

On the edge of a perpendicular precipice of white limestone, a hundred and fifty-five feet high, just 
back of the town, is the fort which, in picturesque beauty of location, has no rival among all the fortresses 
of the United States. Its position somewhat resembles that of Fort Snelling, but is infinitely more 
romantic. It was established by the English, after the destruction of old Fort Michillimackinac by the 



MACKINAC ISLAND. 





French and Indians in 1763. It was turned over to the United States 
in the spring of 1796. Lieutenant Porter Hanks was in command of 
the American garrison, when a detachment of British troops under 
Captain Roberts surprised and captured it, July 17, 1812. On the J.- -' 

4th of August, 1814, the Amen- - 

cans under Colonel Croghan, the 
hero of Fort Stevenson, 
and Major Holmes, landed 
upon the Island and at- 
tempted to retake the fort. 
A battle was fought on - 
\A hat is now known as the 

Early Farm, in which Major Holmes was killed and the Americans defeated. 

One of the officers of the present garrison is the accomplished and genial 

_ Lieutenant Kelton, the historian of the Island. The house in which he 

lives is a hundred and ten years old, and everything about the place has a 

fp~ flavor of antiquity. Magnificent views of the surrounding lakes, channels, 

^f[ islands, promontories, forests, towns and shipping, are to be had from 

"^^p- every point on the lofty parapet ; and the round world affords no grander 

^W" sight than a sunrise or sunset from the fort, the great globe of crimson and 

gold seeming at its rising to burst up from the bosom of Lake Huron, and 



IHLSE eOML FOR \SORK. 



28 MACKINAC ISLAND. t 


at its setting to plunge headlong into the midst of Lake Michigan, casting a million prismatic tints of ;| 


glorious light on wave and sky. It was of one of these gorgeous sunset scenes that Longfellow wrote: :. 


i " Can it be the sun descending 


i 
No; it is the Red Swan floating, \^ 


: O'er the level plain of water? 


Diving down beneath the water ; i. 


: Or the Red Swan floating, flying, 


To the sky its wings are lifted, 


Wounded by the magic arrow. 


With its blood the waves are reddened; '[' 


; Staining all the waves with crimson— 


Over it the star of evening :' 


i With the crimson of its life-blood; 


INIelts and trembles in the purple, ;' 


,i P'illing all the air with splendor — 


Hangs suspended in the twilight. !, 


li With the splendor of its plumage ? 


i; 


! 


No; it is a bead of wampum i. 


Yes, it is the sun descending, 


On the robes of the Great Spirit, u 


Sinking down into the water; 


As he passes thro' the twilight, j 


All the sky is stained with purple, 


Walks in silence thro' the Heavens. j 


All the waters flushed with crimson ! 




ROBERTSON'S FOLLY. 


Leaving the fort by a pathway along the brow of the cliffs, a delightful stroll of a quarter of a mile f 


in a northeasterly direction, brings one to Lovers' Rest, a natural sofa-shaped seat in the rock, surrounded I 


by a group of ancient cedars, and looking out over the lake for many miles. About a hundred yards 


from this is Robertson's Folly, a projecting point of the precipice, a hundred and twenty-seven feet in 


height, and so perpendicular that, like the Ethiopian's sapling, it leans a little the other way. The ;■( 




THESE COME FOR REST. 



tradition says that, soon after the 
occupation of the Island by the 
English, Captain Robertson, com- 
manding the garrison, 
built a house on the verge 
' ?~ of the dizzy cliff. Here 
-_t\_ ' he lived with Wau-bon- 

ong-o-qua — " Woman-of-the-Morning- 
Star" — the beautiful daughter of an 
Ojibway chief, whose innocent maiden 
faith he had betrayed. The house was a scene 
of almost constant revelry and high wassail. 
One afternoon, while a large party of gay 
young officers and their feminine friends were 
feasting in a summer arbor on the brink of 
the precipice, a gigantic Algonquin warrior, 
plumed and painted, strode into the midst of 
the startled group, and buried a long keen 
knife in the heart of the fallen maiden. Then, 
pointing the blood-dripping blade at Robert- 
son, he exclaimed: "English dog! you have 



MACKINAC ISLAND. 



betrayed my daughter! I wash out her dishonor in her blood! " And before a hand could be raised to 
check him, he seized the dead body in his arms and disappeared. A few years afterward, a mass of the 
rock broke away, carrying the house with it into the lake, and only a few fragments of the ruin yet remain 
to proclaim the folly and the crime of one whose name would, but for them, have been forgotten long ago. 
About twenty-five yards from this perpetual monument of wrong, is the Giant's Causeway, a huge 
winding staircase cut by nature's own hands in the face of the precipice ; and a hundred feet down these 
stony steps is Fairy Arch, a perfect arch of grayish-white rock about fifty feet above the lake. 

ARCH ROCK. 

A half-mile further, through a wonderfully variegated forest of pine, maple, oak, ironwood, cedar, 
spruce, tamarack, beech, poplar, basswood and canoe birch, interspersed with filbert thickets sprung 
from nuts planted by the Jesuit fathers two hundred years ago, and one of the grandest and most beautiful 
of all the wonders of the Island is reached. Arch Rock is one of the wildest, weirdest, sublimest freaks 
of nature's handiwork in sculpture. The chisel-prints of untold ages of whirling waters are all over it. 
The first glimpse of its manifold grandeurs and beauties takes away the breath of any party of intelligent 
tourists, and there bursts forth a chorus of rapturous "Oh my's " — "glorious" — "magnificent" — 
"beyond all conception" — "superb" — "awful"- — -"picturesque" — and "enchanting." Each reaches 
for the biggest word in his or her vocabulary of astonishment and delight, and then feels that it is a pitiful 
failure as an attempt to express the emotions that overwhelm one in the presence of such a scene, or 
rather of such scenes. It is indescribable in words, and undepictable by art. Imagine, if you can, 
projecting from the face of a cliff two hundred feet high, a gigantic bay-window of stone, supported by a 




THE BROOK TROUT. 



MACKINAC ISLAND. 



mighty arch a hundred and forty-nine feet high at its summit. The rim or wall of the bay-window is 
about three feet wide, and it bulges out some twenty feet from the cliff, overhanging the blue-green water 
of the lake a dizzy depth below. Foolish people often walk around on top of this narrow ledge or rim, 
but it takes a head warranted not to swim. The view from the summit of the arch takes in a glorious 
sweep of fifty miles. The scene by moonlight from a boat below the arch is one of the most enchanting 
in all the universe of God, The music of the band at the fort comes softly drifting, with the moonbeams 
and the scent of flowers and pinewoods, across the mirror-like waters ; and in the presence of these grand 
Deity-hewn vaults and arches and pillars, it is easy to realize why the simple-minded Indians chose this 
Island as the special dwelling-place of their gods and fairies. 

About a hundred feet below the great arch is Little Arch. 

Three-fourths of a mile along the shore from the arches, a perpendicular pillar of stone, a hundred 
and forty feet in height, stands out from the face of the cliff like a gigantic Cleopatra's Needle. This 
has recently been christened Todd's Obelisk, in honor of the young chief magistrate of the Island. 

SUGAR-LOAF ROCK. 

About a mile from Arch Rock, directly toward the center of the Island, and standing alone amid the 
forest trees, is Sugar-Loaf Rock, as perfect a pyramid as ever graced Egyptian deserts. It is a gray, 
moss-grown rock towering two hundred and eighty-four feet above the lake. At the base it is perhaps 
seventy-five feet long by fifty wide. Twenty or thirty feet from the ground, on the north side of the rock 
is a cave, that is reached by a ladder, and venturesome people sometimes climb to the apex of the huge 
pyramid, for which some more imposing name than Sugar-Loaf should be found. 



:,J 



MACKINAC ISLAND. 



33 



A mile and a half northwest of this lies the Early Farm, on which, near the northern end of the 
Island, is the British Landing of 1812. On this farm, August 4, 1814, was fought the battle in which 
the Americans were defeated and Major Holmes, the second in command, killed. In the southwest part 
of the farm is the old burial-ground; and on the northeastern point of the farm and Island is Scott's 
Cave, a romantic little grotto in the cliff, which a grown person has to stoop to enter, but which is roomy 
enough to hold quite a large party. 

Near this are the Cold 
Springs, innumerable small 
fountains of water, scarcely 
above the freezing point in 
mid-summer, bursting from 
tlie foot of the rocky preci- 
])iLe and flowing into the 
lake. 
_ ^ Not far from British Land- 
ing is Friendship's Altar, a 
|)1 \ce where the giant fairies 
g? of Indian legend might have 
f' offered sacrifice. It is an 
altar-shaped rock about a 
hundred feet high, and as all 




34 



MACKINAC ISLAND. 



treaties between the whites and Indians were signed and acknowledged here, it is sometimes called 
Treaty Rock. 

A mile down the beach to the southward is Champine's Bluff, named for an old Indian chief to 
whom it once belonged, and who died in a cabin of which the ruins are still to be seen on the Early Farm. 

A few hundred yards from this Bluff is Chimney Rock, a slender fingerlike spire of stone, a hundred 
and thirty-one feet in height. 

Near this is Skull Cave, in which tradition says a large number of Iroquois took refuge after a 
terrible defeat by the Ottawas and Ojibways, and being guarded by their foes so they could not escape, 
they all perished miserably in this cavern, where their skulls and bones were found by Henry Alexander, 
a fugitive from the Michillimackinac massacre, who hid himself here in 1763. 

Just over Skull Cave is Matrimonial Hill, indicating a possibility of skeletons in the conjugal closet. 

LOVER'S LEAP. 



No well regulated place of resort can ever afford to be without a Maiden Rock or a Lover's Leap, 
where, in the long-gone ages when true love still found a foothold on earth, some desperate, lovelorn 
Indian maiden clasped her dusky lover in her arms — or because she could not clasp him in her arms — 
sang the wild death-song of her tribe, and leaped from the romantic precipice into the surging tide 
below. Indian maidens seem, from the number of such localities and legends, to have attended to little 
business except singing death-songs and leaping headlong from every high rock they could find. Mack- 
inac Island, not to be behind in anything that is fashionable and proper, has two of these interesting 



MACKINAC ISLAND. 




rocks and reminiscences. Not far from Fairy Arch is Maiden 
Rock, from which a jilted Algonquin princess hurled herself to 
the pickerel and sturgeon ; and exactly across the Island from 
this memorial of feminine rashness stands another everlasting 
witness of woman's constancy and love. A short distance 
southeast of the Cave of Skulls, and a mile west of the fort and 
town, is Lover's Leap, a bold, projecting promontory of stone 
a hundred and forty-five feet high, rising sheer out of the lake. 
A huge solitary pine once stood upon the very verge of the cliff, 
but some vandal of former years has cut it down. Here, the 
legend tells, Me-che-ne-mock-e-nung-o-qua, a young Ojibway 
maiden, used to watch her lover, Ge-niw-e-gwon, as he em- 
barked in his canoe with 



the war parties of Ojibways and Ottawas to seek fame and scalps in 
the lands to the southward. Here she sat and sang the song he 

loved : 

Mong-e-do-gwain, in-de-nain-dum, 
Mong-e-do-gwain, in-de-nain-dum, 
Wain-shung-ish-ween , neen-e-mo-shane, 
Wain-shung-ish-ween, neen-e-mo-shane, 
A-nee-nau-wau-sau-bo-a-zode, 
A-nee-nau-wau-sau-bo-a-zode. » 




36 



MACKINAC ISLAND. 



This is only one stanza out of some three dozen, and translated into a more familiar vernacular than 
Ojibway, runs about in this fashion : 

A loon, I thought was looming, 

A loon, I thought was looming, 

Why! it is he, my lover. 

Why ! it is he, my lover. 

His paddle in the waters gleaming. 

His paddle in the waters gleaming. 

One day the fleet came back, but Ge-niw-e-gwon's joyous war-shout was not heard. A foeman's 
arrow had pierced his heart, and not many mornings afterward the mangled form of the faithful Me- 
che-ne-mock-e-nung-o-qua was found at the foot of her loved rock. Her spirit had gone to join her 
warrior lover's soul in the happy hunting-grounds beyond. 

Under Lover's Leap is the Devil's Kitchen, a titanic fireplace in the side of the cliff; and between 
this and the fort is the Indian Lookout, commanding an almost inimitable view of the lakes, the straits 
and the adjacent islands and shores. From this point the Indians used to watch for the return of their 
war parties. 

There are innumerable other spots on the Island as noteworthy as any of these, but a mention of 
one more must sufiflce. 

FORT HOLMES. 

About a half mile back of Fort Mackinac, on the highest point of Mackinac Island, three hundred 
and eighteen feet above the lake, are the ruins of old Fort Holmes. It was built by the British during 




37 



their occupancy of the Is- 
land after its capture in 
1812, and was called by 
them Fort George. When 
the Americans regained pos- ^-S 
session of the much-contest- ~- 
ed spot, they named it Fort 
_ Holmes in honor of the g dlant 
othcer who fell m in attempt to le- 
take the Island in 1S14. Fiom thi', 
historic spot the eye takes in one of the granclest pinorama-, 
on earth, a sweep of a hundred and fifty miles of magnifi- 
cent lakes, white-crested billows, green 
islands, beetling crags, gently sloping shores 
of dazzling sand, light-houses, towns, Indian 
encampments and far-reaching forests melt- 
ing away in the dim distance into the undis- 
tinguishalile blue of sky and water. Far 
away to the northward are plainly seen St. 
Martin's Bay, St. Martin's Island, Burns' 
Island, and the famous Chippewa village at 



K,| 





38 



MACKINAC ISLAND. 



the mouth of Pine River. To the west lie Point St. Ignatius, the Rabbit's Back Mountain, Point La 
Barbe, where the old traders of a by-gone age used to shave or trim their beards and brush up a little, 
before going to meet their patrons or their girls in Mackinac, and the Gros Cap hills fading away into 
the dim shore-line of the northern peninsula. Outlined against the sky on the southwest are Waugoshance 
light-house, McGulpin's Point and light-house, and nearer at hand Mackinaw City on the northern point 
of the lower peninsula. Fifteen miles southward the pretty little city of Cheboygan lies in plain view, 
with its docks, its tasteful houses and its fleet of steam and sail vessels. Twenty-four miles to the east 
Spectacle Reef light-house looks like a slender finger against the horizon, and just across a narrow strait 
Bois Blanc Island looms up grandly with its trout-streams and light-houses and forests of white birch, 
while twelve miles off to the northeast can be seen the upper part of the Channeaux Islands, an enchanting 
archipelago of some seventy-five or eighty beautiful islands, varying from two miles in length to mere 
green specks a hundred feet across, dotting the crystal waters which rush by, fifteen fathoms deep at the 
shores, and swarming with whitefish, bass, pike, pickerel, the gamy muskalonge and the lake trout. 
Every floating clovid or gleam of sunshine changes the glorious scene by varying the tintings of the waters, 
which range through every shade from deepest azure to palest opal-green, from purple and lavender to 
purest silver. It is truly a realm of enchantment. 

Delicious musings fill the heart, and images of bUss. 

In such a spot, with the glories of earth and heaven forever unrolled before the gaze, where the 
atmosphere is as pure as the gales that wandered over primeval paradise, where the temperature is always 
cool enough to be bracing and invigorating, where a fly or mosquito never was seen, where the inducements 



MACKINAC ISLAND. 



39 




to constant exercise of every sense and sinew are as boundless as the beauties of the 
place, and where the healing fragrance of the pine and hemlock and balsam-fir are 
borne on every breeze, dyspepsia, languor and low spirits take flight at once, " hay- 
fever "^victims are at rest, and sniffling catarrhs and wheezing asthmas breathe 
free as sylvan flutes by Pan or Orpheus blown. Rusty joints cease to squeak, 
canes and braces are laid aside, and the querulous invalid, before he knows it, 
finds himself boating, fishing, strolling, flirting like a prize athlete or a 
Harvard freshman. It is a realm of rosy health and jocund mirth, where 
every prospect pleases, and man is only vile when he tries three times as 
hard to be so as he would have to anywhere else. 
Well might Hon. Horace Mann, writing of the in- 
fluence of <' The Wonderful Isle," say : " I never breathed such an air before. 
I think that this must be some that came clear out of Eden and did not get 
cursed. We sleep every night under sheet, blanket and coverlet, and no day 
is too warm for smart walking and vigorous rowing or bowling. The children 
are crazy with animal spirits, and eat in such a way as to demonstrate the epi- 
gastric paradox that 'the quantity contained is greater than the container.' " 
Such a climate, such air and such surroundings make Mackinac Island 
one of Nature's own glorious sanitariums. The late Dr. Drake says: " The 
Island of Mackinac is the most important summer resort to which we can direct 
the attention of the infirm and fashionable. True, it has no mineral springs, these come for business. 




MACKINAC ISLAND. 



but living streams of pure water, cooled down to the temperature of forty-four degrees, gushing from its 
lime-rock precipices, and an atmosphere never sultry or malarious, supercede all necessity for nauseating 
iron, sulphur and epsom-salts, while the natural scenery is admirably adapted to make the invalid forget 
his ailments." 

Another of America's famous writers, catching the inspiration of the place, exclaims : " The eternal 
seasons, as they roll, bring in the glowing months of summer a placid sense of rest, invigoration and 
bodily and mental stimulus to Mackinac. How foolish was the old Grecian king when he offered a 
princely fortune for a new pleasure. It can be had here in every breath, in every direction upon which 
the eye may turn, and in the sense of health and strength which fills the channels of the blood, sends 
exquisite pleasure along the nerves, and opens broadly the capacities of our common nature, reaching 
beyond logic to spirit." 



NEIGHBORING ATTRACTIONS. 

BOIS BLANC ISLAND, THE CHANNEAUX, POINT ST. IGNACE, MACKINAW CITY, SAULT STE. MARIE, 
THE PAINTED ROCKS, MARQUETTE, THE GREAT MINES, FALLS, AND FISHERIES. 



I OVELY as Mackinac Island is, it is the center of a vast group of interesting scenes and 
I y places that are easily accessible by rail, steamer, sail, or row boat. 

\ Only two and a-half miles across a deep channel is Round Island, a lovely little green 

dot of a hundred and eighty acres, as round as a dollar of the fathers. 

A little further toward Lake Huron, and a delightful jaunt by sail-boat, is Bois Blanc, or White- 
wood Island, named from the forests of white birch that cover it. From the bark of this tree the 
Indians make hats, baskets, and many articles both for use and ornament. The island contains 31,351 
acres, and there are upon it two streams that abound with brook trout, while all along the shores the 
waters are alive with bass, pickerel and whitefish. 



42 



MACKINAC ISLAND. 



THE CHANNEAUX. 

Twelve miles northeast of Mackinac, a charming trip by steamer or sail-boat, are the Channeaux 
Islands, a group of perhaps seventy-five islands, with a labyrinth of deep, swift channels, winding in 
and out among them, and many land-locked harbors, where one has to keep a vigilant look-out to avoid 
being lost, even the compass seeming occasionally to get bewildered. This was the favorite fishing 
ground of the Indians, and the waters are literally alive with all the finest varieties of fish known in 
this region. Whitefish of delicious flavor are caught, weighing from ten to twenty-five pounds, and 
muskalonge weighing from thirty to thirty-five pounds. A party of eight persons, in one day last 
season, caught over a ton of fish, of all kinds, with hook and line. Connoisseurs say there is a marked 
difference in the flavor of the fish caught on the east and west sides of Mackinac Island, and those of 
the Channeaux are considered fit for any epicurean. Brook trout, weighing from three to three and 
a-half pounds, are frequently caught in the small streams emptying into the straits among the 
Channeaux. 

POINT ST. IGNACE. 



Six miles across the north channel is Point St. Ignace, a flourishing town of about 2,000 inhabi- 
tants, surrounded by picturesque scenery, and rapidly becoming a popular summer resort. Just back 
of the town is the Rabbit's Back, a strange range of rocky hills, presenting precisely the appearance 
that suggested the name, with a gigantic perpendicular pillar of grayish-white stone, a hundred and 
thirty feet high, sticking up just enough to put the finishing tail to the picture. A beautiful little lake of 




MACKINAC ISLAND. 



crystaly-clear water, teeming with fish, lies in the rear of the town, fifty feet above the level of 
the great lake in front. St. Ignace was the burial place of Marquette, who founded the mission 
of St. Ignatius here in 1670. The original name of the Point in the Iroquois 
tongue was Nau-do-wa-qua-au-me, or " Iroquois Woman's Point." The people 
are intelligent and hospitable, and gladly render visitors 
every assistance and courtesy in their power. 
There are few places where one will oftener 
have to say " thank you." 
Eight miles to the south- 
ward is Mackinaw City, on 
the site of old Fort Michil- 
limackinac, the scene of 
the great massacre in 1 763. 

Its name in the Ojibway tongue was Pe-quod-e-nonge, _ 
and it was a stopping place for French explorers and 
Jesuit missionaries as far back as 1640. A mission was 
established here by Marquette in 1 671, eight years 
before LaSalle's discovery of the Mississippi. 

Graham's Shoals, a favorite fishing-ground, where the huge 
lake trout jump clear out of the water at a trolling-spoon, are a 
short distance west. ™'^^'= ^°*'^ ^^^ ^^'^^ 





MACKINAC ISLAND. 



AN AMERICAN KINGDOM. 

How many readers of this little book are aware that an American king reigned on an island near 
Mackinac little more than thirty years ago? Probably not one in a hundred ever knew it ; and yet, almost 
in sight of the ruins of Fort Holmes, forty-four miles away to the westward, lies Big Beaver Island, on 
which James Jesse Strang, one of- the early Mormons, proclaimed himself king, issued his I'oyal code 
of laws, and for many years ruled with a rod of blood and iron, levying pirate tribute on the shipping 
and commerce both of the United States and Canada. He was a man of ability, having been a member 
of the Michigan legislature and a contributor to various scientific and literary journals, and during all 
his reign published as a sort of court journal a paper of decided merit. He and his horde of fanatics 
and desperadoes committed innumerable murders and other outrages, seized vessels and made themselves 
a terror to all this region ; on one occasion cutting the heart out of the living bosom of John Bennett, a 
Gentile who had offended his majesty, " King Strang." The United States government was appealed 
to time and again, but as the average American statesman is too often but another variety of pirate and 
Mormon, no redress was obtained, and " King Strang" might have been swaying the sceptre yet, if one of 
his subjects had not assassinated him in 1847. The long-outraged people of Cheboygan, Mackinac and 
all the neighboring islands and villages organized a naval expedition the next year, under Arch. Newton, 
and drove his defunct majesty's retainers from the island, and broke up the kingdom. 

THE PAINTED ROCKS. 

Fifty miles north of Mackinac Island by sail-boat or steamer are the far-famed Painted or Pictured 
Rocks, so eloquently described by Schoolcraft in his " History of the Noi'th American Indians," as 



MACKINAC ISLAND. 



45 




entitled to a place among the wonders of the world. They consist of 
groups of overhanging precipices, towering walls, vast caverns, water- 
falls, and prostrate pillars and columns resembling the ruins of some 
mighty Babylon of the gods and giants, in wonderful confusion, 
riiey are over three hundred feet perpendicularly in height, and extend 
foi fifteen miles along the lake shore. They consist of sandstone, 
using stratum on stratum, and arc of almost every conceivable color 
and shade, red, black, yel- 



low, green, brown, white 
and gray. The effectwhen 
\ iewed from the lake on a 
sunshiny day is indescrib- 
ably gorgeous. About four 
miles from the beginning 
of this weird and wonder- 
ful formation is Cascade La Portaille, a beautiful stream that 
leaps from the face of the precipice nearly a hundred feet into 
the lake below. Its form is that of a rainbow rising from 
the lake to the top of the precipice, and a small boat can pass 
between it and the bluff. In the same formation is Doric 
Rock, consisting of four vast pillars of sandstone, supporting 



m 



^i&m^\<^ 



'-m 



46 



MACKINAC ISLAND. 



a stratum or entablature of the same stone, and presenting exactly the appearance of a colossal work of 
art. On top of the entablature rests a stratum of soil covered with a growth of spruce and pine trees, 
some of them nearly a hundred feet in height. That part of the entablature included between the pillars 
is arched, giving the impression of a grand vaulted passage-way into some vast temple of an unknown 
deity. 

TAHQUAMENON RIVER AND FALLS. 



Taking either a steamer on the lake, or a train on the Detroit, Mackinac and Marquette Railroad, a 
short run brings the tourist to the wild Tahquamenon River on the northern peninsula. It is one of the 
most picturesque streams in America, from an eighth to a quarter of a mile wide, with a channel depth 
of twenty feet. Its waters swarm with bass, pike, pickerel and muskalonge, which are often caught of 
from thirty to thirty-five pounds weight. The grand falls of the Tahquamenon, a hundred feet in height, 
form the theme of one of Longfellow's most charming poems, written after his visit to the spot nearly 
a half century ago. In one of the streams of this region Judge J. H. Steere, of the Mackinac 
judicial district, saw a brook trout caught and weighed, that tipped the scales at six pounds and seven 
ounces. 

From the Tahquamenon, a few hours' run by the Detroit, Mackinac and Marquette Railroad, the 
great tourists' route of the northern peninsula, takes the traveler into the famous copper and iron region, 
where some of the world's grandest bonanzas have recently been opened up, and where many more yet 
remain to be discovered and developed. It is a region full of interest to every practical or speculative 



man. Marquette, the northern terminus of the road, is one of the largest ore-shipping points in the 
world. 

The whole region around Mackinac Island abounds with similar places of interest to the tourist of 
every class, to the antiquarian, to the scientist, the artist, the sportsman, the invalid, and the fashionable 
pleasure-seeker. The woods are full of game, the waters are full of fish, the air is full of health and 
vigor, and all, woods, waters, air and sky, are full of beauty beyond the power of pen to portray or 
imagination to conceive. Seeing alone is believing. 



^::J) 



VI. 



HOV\^ TO REACH MACKINAC. 

TO PARADISE IN A PALACE CAR— PERFECT ARRANGEMENTS OF THE MICHIGAN CENTRAL 
RAILWAY TO MAKE THE JOURNEY ITSELF A DELIGHT. 



WITH all its advantages and charms, Mackinac Island would long since have been the most 
fashionable place of summer resort in America, but for its inaccessibility. The journey 
was long, tedious, and often hazardous, having to be made by irregular and uncertain 
steamers, or by stage or wagon through a wilderness almost unbroken. The thousands who, in past 
years, have found health and pleasure amid its woods and waters, have earned their enjoyment by heroic 
braving of dangers and enduring of hardships. 

But all these difficulties are now as much things of the past as the painted warrior bands that once 
flitted along these shores. The Michigan Central Railway managers, appreciating the fact that Mack- 
inac Island has all the qualifications requisite to render it the great watering place of the New World, 
the Mecca of all health and pleasure seekers, have extended an arm of their grand system of railroads 



MACKINAC ISLAND. 



to it, and equipped it with every convenience and elegance of modern travel. The Michigan Central 
has a direct line through from Chicago, Jackson, and Detroit, making close connections with all trains 
to and from St. Louis, Indianapolis, Louisville, Cincinnati, Toledo, Columbus, Cleveland, Pittsburg, 
and all eastern, southern and western points. The distance to Mackinac by rail, from Chicago, is five 
hundred miles, and the run is made in twenty-two hours. The distance to Mackinac, from Detroit, is 
three hundred and ninety-one miles, which is whirled through in thirteen hours. The road is stone- 
ballasted, and as smooth as sliding on ice. Magnificent parlor, drawing-room and sleeping cars are 
run on all trains, and palatial dining-cars on all main line trains. 

The trip from Chicago is a flying panorama of city and wildwood, orchard, meadow, lake, and 
stream. The journeyer, reclining at ease in a luxuriously cushioned arm-chair, dashes through such 
lovely suburbs as Hyde Park, Pullman, Lake and Kensington; through rich and thriving young cities 
like Kalamazoo, Battle Creek, Jackson, Saginaw, and Bay City, with from 20,000 to 25,000 inhabitants 
each ; through Lansing, the beautiful capital of Michigan, with its stately capitol and public buildings ; 
through the wonderful fruit region, with its endless orchards of "California" pears, peaches, plums, 
and apples, and its vineyards of luscious grapes ; through the great salt-making region, with its vast 
boilers and evaporators, and its mountains of barrels ; and, for hundreds of miles, through the grandest 
forests in the world, the lumber region, with its huge mills and its aromatic odors of spruce and pine, 
carrying health to weak lungs, catarrhal nostrils and feeble throats. 

Here Otsego Lake is passed, with its huge saw-mills, its airy summer cottages and hotels, and its 
fine fishing and bathing. At Roscommon Station an arm of the Au Sable River is crossed; swift, clear, 
crooked, and its waters alive with grayling, hundreds of which may be caught in a day by any skilled 




JACKSON DEPOT. 



MACKINAC ISLAND. 



angler; while the vast forests along the banks abound with deer, turkeys, and other game, including an 
occasional black bear. Five miles from Roscommon, by a beautiful drive through the pine woods, is 
Higgins Lake, ten miles long and four wide, surrounded by romantic scenery. The lake has no inlet, 
and the water in the center has been sounded nine hundred feet without finding bottom. The water is 
so clear that a nickel can be seen on the bottom at a depth of forty feet, and it has the peculiarity of 
always showing at least four distinct colors on the surface, dark purple, blue, and two shades of green. 
On picturesque points, around the shores are groups of summer hotels and cottages, pagodas, boat and 
bath houses, and all the evidences of fashionable resort. The water swarms with bass, pickerel, land- 
locked salmon, native whitefish, and the finest perch that are found in this country. 

At Grayling Station the main Au Sable River is crossed, and seven miles west is the Manistee River, 
both famed for their grayling fishing. The two rivers head within a mile of each other, and one flows 
into Lake Huron and the other into Lake Michigan. Every description of game is found in the forests 
and jungles along their shores. 

At Cheboygan is the eastern end of a chain of exquisite lakes and rivers, that cuts the peninsula 
entirely in two; and a trip on the dainty little steamer, that makes daily trips through this necklace of 
lakelet beads strung on a silver-river thread, is one of the delights of a season. A run of six miles up 
the Cheboygan River, and Mullet Lake is reached. It is a magnificent sheet of water, twelve miles 
long and six miles wide, with every beauty of Minnetonka, and many exquisite features that are lacking 
in the loveliest of Minnesota's liquid gems. It is two hundred feet deep, with sloping beaches of white 
sand, and waters clear as clearest crystal, and literally alive with black bass, pickerel, muskalonge and 
swarms of splendid whitefish, of which great numbers are taken by spearing. Muskalonge weighing 



MACKINAC ISLAND. 



53 




from forty-five to forty-eight pounds have frequently been 
caught, and pickerel weighing from ten to sixteen pounds are 
common. The Mullet Lake House at the head or south end 
of the lake, at the mouth of Pigeon River, is a large and hand- 
some summer hotel, furnished in elegant style and supplied 
with all modem improvements. Steamers for all points stop at 
the house, and the Smith Brothers, the proprietors, keep a large 
fleet of pleasure-boats 



on hand. The Michi- 
gan Central road runs 
along the western shore 
of the lake its entire 
length. 

Twelve miles through this charming lake, and the mouth of 
Indian River is entered. Up this river five miles, running under 
the Michigan Central Railroad bridge at Indian River Station, 
and Burt Lake ojiens out to view, ten miles long and six wide, 
surrounded by fine farms, summer cottages and hotels, and 
magnificent forests of beech, elm, basswood, hemlock, cedar and 
pine. At the southwest end of Burt Lake, the little boat enters 
Crooked River, runs through it seven miles to Crooked Lake, and 




MACKINAC ISLAND. 



lands within seven miles of 
Petoskey, which delightful 
Lake Michigan port is reach- 
ed by a dummy railroad. 
All these lakes and rivers 
abound with black bass, 
some of which have been 
caught weighing seven and 
a-half povmds, muskalonge, 
pike, pickerel, perch and 
whitefish. The Indians take 
great quantities of whitefish and muskalonge by spearing them, and a fish-spear is a part of every sports- 
man's outfit. 

From Cheboygan the elegant steamer Dove, Capt. John Robertson, will make regular daylight trips 
to the far-famed Sault Ste. Marie, connecting with Michigan Central trains, and touching at Mackinac 
Island and all points of interest. At the Sault Ste. Marie is the great ship canal which has revolutionized 
lake commerce, and the scenery is among the grandest in the entire region. Here a connection is made 
with the line of steamers for Marquette and all Lake Superior points. 

Sturgeon River, which empties into Indian River near Indian River Station, is said to afford as fine 
grayling fishing as any stream in the old or new world. 




MACKINAC ISLAND. 



The Trout Brook and Little Black River, near Cheboygan, abound with brook trout, 
fisherman can easily catch from one to three hundred a day. 

The vast wild rice fields at the head of Mullet 
Lake afford splendid duck shooting, and snipe 
and woodcock are abundant. Deer and bear are 
found in plenty, and the whole region is a sports- 
man's elysium. 

A run of half an hour from Cheboygan, and 
the traveler by the Michigan Central is at Mack- 
inaw City, where a connection is made with th( 
staunch and elegant steamer, "Algomah," undei 
command of that veteran of the lakes, Capt. 
Hiram Ames, for Mackinac Island, Point St. 
Ignace and the upper peninsula. The sail across 
the North Channel to the Island requires but 
thirty minutes, and every minute affords a new 
view of scenes as grand and beautiful as tourist's 
eye ever beheld, or tourist's heart could ever wisli 
to feast upon. 

The Michigan Central Company offers the 
lowest excursion rates to all points in this True 



and a good 




MACKINAC ISLAND. 



Wonderland of the Unsalted Seas. Special rates will be made for large parties, and every assistance and 
accommodation cheerfully afforded. All letters of inquiry will receive prompt attention, and all desired 
information will be given. Do not hesitate, but write at once to O. W. Ruggles, General Passenger 
A^ent, or F. I. Whitney, Ass't Gen'l Passenger Agent, of the Michigan Central Railroad, Chicago, 
Illinois. 



ANNALS OF FORT MACKINAC." 



This is the title of a valuable and charming little volume, by Lieutenant D. H. Kelton, 
of the United States Army, which has just been issued from the press. It contains a 
whole library of interesting facts in the military, ecclesiastical and civil historj- of the 
beautiful island and its picturesque fortress. Many of its historic incidents are entirely 
new to the literary world, having been exhumed from the dusty records of centuries past. 
It contains many thrilling Indian stories and legends never before published, and is 
altogether not only a delightful book for the summer tourist in this enchanted land, but 
a valuable contribution to the history of a region which has been the theatre of innumer- 
able important events in the annals of earth's three foremost nations. It should have a 
place in every tourist's satchel, and on every American student's library shelves. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



016 090 672 8 




Affile- 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
l1l'"ilTI" II"! I" 111'! I'l' 



016 090 672 8 



